Judge won't yank civilian workers from county jails

The deputy sheriffs' union lost a round in court on Monday as an Orange County judge denied the union's request to pull about 140 civilian workers out of the county jails.

Judge Franz E. Miller ordered the county to negotiate with the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs over the hiring of civilians to do work in the jails formerly performed by sworn deputies. He also ordered that civilian workers not fill any additional jail positions pending the outcome of those negotiations.

"This is clearly about a power struggle between labor and management during a very tough time for everybody," Miller said.

The deputies sued in 2010 after some were told they couldn't apply for certain assignments in the jails that were being given to newly-hired civilian Correctional Services Assistants, or CSAs. The union claimed that the county had refused to negotiate about the addition of CSAs to the jails, an issue affecting deputies' jobs. State law requires such negotiations, the union said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department began preparing in 2008 to create the CSA position as a way to save money during difficult budgetary times. A starting CSA earns about $20 an hour, while a new deputy makes about $29 an hour. The CSAs also get less generous retirement benefits than the deputies.

When the deputies sued in August 2010, there were fewer than 50 CSAs employed by the county. That number has since grown to 140, saving the county about $7 million, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens testified during a two-week trial before Judge Miller. The CSAs are trained for about 11 weeks, as compared to six months for the deputies.

“My responsibility as sheriff is to manage the jails as efficiently as possible, and as long as it's not impacting, displacing personnel, I believe I have the managerial prerogative to do that,” Hutchens testified.

There are about 730 staff positions at the county jails, with deputies filling about 80 percent of those jobs, sheriff's Cmdr. Steve Kea said Monday.

The county hopes to eventually put CSAs, who have limited contact with inmates, into 34 percent of jobs in the jails, with deputies in 66 percent. No deputies have lost their jobs or been demoted because of the hiring of CSAs, according to testimony at the trial. Deputies typically serve five or six years in the jails before moving into a patrol slot.

The deputies' union asserted in early 2008 that the creation of CSAs was an issue that required the county to "meet and confer" with the union under state law. However, the union's executive director, Mark Nichols, at the same time told the county that the union wasn't immediately willing to meet and confer on the topic. Nichols testified that he wanted to negotiate the CSAs as part broader talks on a new contract the following year.

But in 2009, the county's Board of Supervisors assigned the representation of CSAs to another union, the Orange County Employees Association. The deputies' union did not appeal that assignment, as it could have done. During contract talks with the deputies union, the county's human resources director, Carl Crown, refused to negotiate about CSAs, Nichols testified. The deputies later removed the CSAs from their list of bargaining topics and agreed to a new contract with the county.

Then, after the CSAs began filling positions previously assigned to deputies, the deputies' union sued. In October 2010, Judge Kazuharu Makino granted the union's' request for an injunction blocking the county from filling any more deputies' positions with CSAs. The county appealed, and the injunction was stayed while the appeal was considered. In September 2011, the Court of Appeal in Santa Ana upheld Makino's ruling.

After hearing testimony and arguments in the non-jury trial, Judge Miller on Monday issued a tentative ruling from the bench. The order will become final after the county's attorneys write it up and Miller signs it, probably in a few days.

Finding that the county and the sheriff's department did not act in bad faith in their dealings with the deputies union, Miller declined a request by the deputies to remove the CSAs from their union, the OCEA, and award their representation to the deputies union, the AOCDS. He also declined to remove the CSAs from positions formerly occupied by deputies while the county negotiates about CSAs with the AOCDS.

However, it's unclear what leverage the AOCDS will have in those negotiations, as the union doesn't represent the CSAs and the talks won't be part of a broader deal on a new contract. If the sides can't agree on what to do about the CSAs, the Board of Supervisors can simply impose the county's last, best and final offer.

Tom Dominguez, president of AOCDS, said "there's a lot of issues in the ruling that we think are going to be the basis for a possible appeal later on."

Wendy Phillips, senior deputy county counsel, said she was "very pleased" with Miller's ruling.

John Moorlach, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, was also pleased. "That's good news," he said. "Why would you need a fully sworn officer to be a jail employee? We've got to try every trick in the book to reduce our costs.

"It's just good common sense," Moorlach added. "We've had too many of our good sworn officers spend too much time in the jails."

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